Toulouse-Lautrec at the Courtauld

What a relief, after the visual bombardment of the good, bad and calculatedly commercial at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, to go on to the Courtauld Gallery’s current show, Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond The Moulin Rouge, which runs to 18 September.  Not only has the Courtauld secured a loan of the Art Institute of Chicago’s At the Moulin Rouge as the highlight, but the Gallery provides additional ophthalmic balm in the form of an opportunity to wander through its permanent collection of late 19th and 20th century art.

As might be expected, the Gallery has produced an exceptionally informative webpage about the current exhibition. But there is scope to add a minor footnote here relating to one of this blog’s preoccupations: SW France. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was born in 1864 in Albi (Tarn départment in the Midi-Pyrenees region). In 1883 his mother, Comtesse Adèle, bought a château, Malromé, in the Gironde département (Aquitaine region). Lautrec visited frequently and died there in 1901. He was buried nearby in Verdelais.

'La Comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec dans le salon du Château de Malromé'

Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi

Château Malromé has produced wine since the 1600s. Currently it makes red wines (including Cuvée Comtesse Adèle) designated as Bordeaux supérieur, and whites, Bordeaux Blanc. There are about 40ha of vines. Some of the Malromé labels incorporate an image of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

PS In the unlikely event that the anonymous donor who sponsored the Courtauld exhibition should read this – your generosity is much appreciated.

François Ozon’s ‘Potiche’

François Ozon’s films in recent years include the dramas 5x2, Under the Sand (Sous le sable) and Swimming Pool (La piscine) and the comedy 8 Women (8 Femmes). Potiche, ( a trophy wife), which has now been released in the UK, is, like 8 Women, based on a comic play and stars Catherine Deneuve. As in her 100th film, A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), Deneuve plays the matriarch of a French business family. In the musical film which made her name in 1964, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, she helped her mother in their umbrella shop (parapluiterie? – probably not), so it seems appropriate that in Potiche she steps in to run the family umbrella factory (which seems to bear as much resemblance to the real thing as Willy Wonka’s did to Cadburys), and ends with a song. 

The film is set in late 1970s France under Giscard d'Estaing’s presidency when his Prime Minister, Roland Barre, advocated industrial restructuring leading to increasing unemployment against opposition from the powerful French trade unions. Gérard Depardieu plays the local (and communist) mayor (a significant figure in France).  Not surprisingly, with Deneuve and Depardieu and its retrokitsch 70s setting, the film was a hit in France, so as with another success there, Little White Lies, don’t expect intellectual profundity. Nonetheless, without making heavy weather of it, the film touches on issues of feminism, adultery, abortion and deindustrialisation –  perhaps too lightly for some tastes.

Pretty certain to entertain in a drab wet June here in England.